No handmaids here! Liberal women launch their red resistance

And now it's spreading among the wider sisterhood of the Liberal Party: a semi-secret call to arms - or perhaps, stilettos - among those fed up with the machinations of the male majority.

Liberal MP Julia Banks and Minister for Jobs, Industrial Relations and Women Kelly O'Dwyer during a division on Monday.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Victorian backbencher Julia Banks, having declared herself so repelled by bullying during the most recent Liberal leadership delirium that she is quitting politics at the coming election, was in on the code on Monday, pointedly choosing fire-engine red heels for her entrance to Parliament.

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And if the besuited, flag-lapelled men of the party missed the message that their female colleagues wanted them to wake up and smell the (red) roses, they needed only look around the benches of the Parliament during question time.

A couple of days after every female candidate for Malcolm Turnbull's vacant seat of Wentworth had been passed over for a man, an unusual number of women on the government side had chosen jackets in red.

There seemed rather more than a wry hint of The Handmaid’s Tale - the TV series, based on Margaret Atwood’s book, in which totalitarian (male) leaders subjugate women, preventing them from working, owning property, handling money, or reading. Oh, yes, and handmaids wear red.

Scott Morrison and his backbench during question time on Monday.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Should this all sound altogether too esoteric, a little recent history is in order.

The Red Shoe Resistance kicked off in the days after the Liberal Party’s latest leadership convulsion had ended with both Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop gone from their positions as prime minister and deputy Liberal leader.

Ms Bishop, clearly furious with those who had let their testosterone get the better of them and their party, strode out in a pair of heels in the most vivid red to announce that, despite having resigned the deputy position she had occupied for 11 years, she was not about to quit the Parliament.

The contrast of Julie Bishop's red shoes against a sea of black footwear spoke to the Liberal Party's issues with female representation. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Some day, she suggested, the party would choose a woman to lead it. If you stretched your imagination, you might have heard Dorothy, the girl in the red shoes in the Wizard of Oz, about to break into song along the lines of "Someday, I wish upon a star/Wake up where the clouds are far behind me/Where trouble melts..."

This week, a report emerged of a WhatsApp text-messaging chat-group embraced by up to 20 Liberal women discussing how to confront bullying in Parliament and whether quotas should be considered to increase the number of female MPs.

Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, West Australian senator Linda Reynolds, texted that "Lucy [Gichuhi], Julia [Banks] and Kelly [O’Dwyer] need our moral support". All three Liberals have publicly spoken about bullying during the leadership change, without naming names.

Bishop texted back that "I have been asked to speak at a women’s forum tomorrow on this topic. Perhaps I’ll have some insights."

The following day, speaking at the Women’s Weekly Women of the Future Awards, Ms Bishop said: "It is evident – notwithstanding those who say 'nothing to see here, move on' – that there is an acceptance of a level of behaviour in Canberra that would not be tolerated in any other workplace across Australia."

And what of those red shoes captured so memorably by Ellinghausen’s camera?

"It’s not like me to detail what I meant by a particular act," Ms Bishop told the forum, a trifle enigmatically.

"But I have created a wave of red shoe emojis on every text message I have received since that date!" Bishop did not return calls from Fairfax Media on Monday.

Meanwhile, the red revolution in Liberal women's ranks hasn’t been lost on the women of the Labor Party. They’ve taken to wearing little badges declaring "Labor women are the life of the party".